Forbidden Area

Pat Frank

Description

From the author of the post-apocalyptic classic Alas Babylon, comes this eerie, cold war thriller. A young teenage couple having a rendezvous one night on a beach in Florida suddenly sees a submarine emerge from the ocean. Armed soldiers disembark the vessel and a Buick drives off its landing ramp. For Henry Hazen, who is scheduled to ship out to an army training camp the next day, the sight leaves him uneasy, but he tells no one what he has witnessed. Katherine Hume is the only woman working for the Pentagon's Atomic Energy Commission. From intelligence they have gathered, she and her team are convinced the Russians are poised to conduct a nuclear attack on the U.S. on or shortly before Christmas. But convincing their superiors an attack is imminent is proving far more difficult than she could have imagined–even after several stealth fighter planes and their pilots go missing over the Gulf. Banker Robert Gumol sees all the signs that the big attack is finally coming. As a reluctant spy for the Russians, Gumol's loyalties lie more with his adopted country than his motherland. Deciding to take the next flight to Havana, he risks being executed by the Russians if his betrayal is discovered–but he's willing to put it all on the line for a chance at freedom. With the clock ticking, the fate of America hangs by a very thin thread. A classic of science fiction that is a cautionary tale of the dangers of nuclear power, Forbidden Area is as timely today as it was when it was first published in 1958.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Military
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 04 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636623
• Langue: English

Extrait

Forbidden Area
by Pat Frank
Subjects: Fiction -- Thrillers; Cold War

First published in 1956
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
forbidden
area


by
Pat
Frank

for Dodie

one
There is no lonelier stretch of beach on theAtlantic than the twenty miles between Ponte Verda and St.Augustine, in northern Florida. A few hundred feet inland HighwayA1A parallels the surf, but the coquina road is narrow,pocked, and avoided by wary tourists. It is no scenic drive.High dunes wall the highway from the sea, and where there areno dunes the ocean is curtained by cabbage palms and stuntedmagnolias fighting for root space in dense palmetto thickets. Ona June night in the full of the moon this beach was inhabited onlyby a boy and a girl lying on a blanket in a white, spoon-shapedhollow between two dunes.
Henry Hazen and Nina Pope, both high school seniors fromSt. Augustine, had been there before. They called it “our place,”and used it for immature love-making, and confidences, and fordreaming. They did not consider their dreams unreasonable.Nina wanted to go to New York and get a job as a secretary,either to some big business executive or a Broadway producer.She would have her own apartment with full-length mirrors, abuilt-in dressing table, and a stall shower with sliding glass doors.Henry wanted to be a researcher, or anyway an engineer, forsome big electronics company. He would like to find this jobin Miami, although he would fly to New York to see Nina, weekends.When he became chief of research, or owned his owncompany, or invented something really big, like radar, she wouldgive up her job and they would get married. They would livein one of those new Miami houses where when you woke upyou pressed a button, the bedroom wall opened, and you rolledout of bed into your own private swimming pool. All this mighthave to wait a few years. She didn’t know how to type, as yet,and he had just signed up in the Marines.
Just south of their hideaway an unmarked road, simply twinruts packed with oyster shell, twisted through the dunes fromA1A to high-water mark. Since this road was used, on occasion,by the beach buggies of fishermen after red bass, Henry refrainedfrom turning in and blocking it. If he and Nina wereseen and recognized, word of it might get back to Nina’s father,a dark, brooding, violent man, and a deputy sheriff. Instead,Henry eased his car into a palm-shrouded pocket off the shoulderof the highway. Then, carrying blanket and swim suits, theyclimbed across the dunes to the seclusion of their hollow. Hiscaution, or timidity, undoubtedly saved their lives.
This was likely their last date for a long time, and yet theirtalk faltered. They were a little sad, and a little frightened, forclosing a chapter of youth is a small death, with all the chapters-to-comean uncertain hereafter. On Monday Nina would start asecretarial training course at the St. Augustine business school,and on Tuesday Henry would leave for a training camp in theCarolinas. So they swam for a time in the dark waters beyondthe breakers and then walked the beach hand in hand until thesoft south wind dried them. They returned to the intimacy oftheir hollow and lay on the blanket, faces to the stars, shoulderstouching but thoughts already diverging ahead. Henry raisedhimself on his arm, thin and knobby as a bamboo pole, andlooked down on her face. Nina was a frail girl, small-boned andslender, patches of freckles on her nose and shoulders. Theirclassmates thought her mousy. Henry thought her beautiful. Heleaned over and kissed her and she responded for a moment,her body arching to meet his. Then she pushed him away. “It’slate,” she said. “We’ve got to go. Turn your back while I dress.”
He wanted to protest. He wanted to say that this would betheir last chance for a long time. But he saw that she was gonefrom him, her mind on something else entirely. He rose to hisfeet and turned his face to the sea.
“Now don’t look,” she said.
“You’ll never get hurt by a look,” Henry said. Neverthelesshe did not look. It was their ritual.
Soon she said, “Okay, you can look now.”
He didn’t turn or answer. He was witness to an astonishingsight. Where there had been only water before, there was now ablack hump in the sea. It lay less than a mile offshore, solid asa reef.
“What’s the matter?” Nina asked.
“We’ve got a visitor,” he said, and pointed.
She stepped beyond him up the slope of their hollow until shecould see over the rim. “Where did it come from?” she asked.
“I don’t know. All of a sudden it was just there.” He felt uneasy.He didn’t want to say that it had popped straight up outof the sea, but now that he thought of it, that’s what must havehappened.
“Maybe it’s a whale,” she said. “A dead whale.”
“I don’t think so,” Henry said. “It’s too high out of the waterto be a dead whale. Anyway, I think it’s bigger than a whale.Must be a ship, but it’s a funny-lookin’ ship. No masts, nolights.”
“It could be an oiler,” she said. “I’ve seen oilers in the carrierbase at Mayport. It could be an oiler in distress.”
“No it couldn’t,” Henry said. “If it was an oiler broke down orsomething, there’d be a lot of Navy out there with it. Now itcould be a menhaden boat that lost its masts in a storm, exceptthere hasn’t been any storm. It looks more like a big ship, capsized.”He hesitated a moment and then added, “Or a submarine.”
So gradually that for a moment Henry thought his eyes werewrong, the black blob on the silvered sea began to change shape.It looked as if it were splitting apart, like an amoeba under themicroscope in biology class. Then there was no doubt of it. Asmall part did detach itself from the larger mass. At first thesmall part seemed to be drifting, but then it assumed purpose anddirection, narrowed, and moved towards shore, its speed increasinguntil it created a thin, phosphorescent bow wave. Soon itwas so close that they could hear the muffled throb of its engine.
Henry had heard stories of dope and Orientals being smuggledin from Cuba, and he was certain that this was what they werewitnessing. He pulled on his trousers over his swim trunks,slipped on his shirt without bothering to button it, and his shoeswithout tying the laces. He took his wrist watch from his trouserspocket and noted the time as he strapped it on. It was 12:15.He said, “Nina, we’d better get out of here right now.”
She put her hand on his arm and said, “Why? This is exciting.Let’s watch.”
He wanted overwhelmingly to attain the security of the car,or at least retreat to the top of the dunes. From the top of thedunes they could watch and then run for it. But he’d feel sillyif it turned out that the big boat was just a disabled fishermanand the small one a boatload of men who needed help. Hecontained his fear, in the greater fear that Nina would thinkhim yellow.
When the boat was inshore of the breakers he recognized itsshoebox shape. It was a landing craft such as the Marines used.It grated on the sand, broached, straightened, and lunged to astop, its stern still rising and falling to the surge of the surf.So shallow was its draught that its ramp dropped into only a fewinches of water.
Men started coming out of the bow, trotting down the ramp,ten or twelve of them, all carrying weapons, sub-machine gunsstrapped to their shoulders. They fanned out along the beach likefingers of a fist suddenly unclenched. They deployed in a purposefulmanner, and then advanced on the dunes in a skirmishline like soldiers. One headed directly for their hollow, as if heknew they were there. It was too late to run for it now, notwith the sand so white and the moon so brilliant.
Henry dropped to his knees and pulled Nina to his side. Hescrambled to the left where a clump of rice grass bent over thelip of their hollow, drawing her along with him. They pressedthemselves into the sand. They tried to mold their bodies to theshape of the grass’s feathery shadow. Henry’s arm, pushing downon the girl’s back, felt an uncontrollable shaking. He didn’t knowwhether it was her body or his hand that shook. In the spaceof a few seconds their world had gone crazy. Where only a fewminutes before he had been thinking about the future, now theremight be no future at all, for these men behaved like huntersmoving across a field to flush rabbits or quail, guns held forsnap shooting. The hollow was no longer a sanctuary. It was atrap, a convenient pit for killing.
Henry heard the crunch of shoes on crusted sand and lookedup, with the slightest movement of his face, and over him wassilhouetted the bulk of a man. The man skirted the edge of theirhideaway, stopped, and stared up at the ridge of the dunes.Despite the warmth of the night, the man wore black, zipperedcoveralls and a black helmet. His face was blackened, so thatonly his eyes shone whitely. His hands, sooty like his face,gripped a stubby gun with a circular magazine. The barrelweaved and probed like the head of a snake with eyes of its own.There was no sound except the breathing of this man. Withevery exhalation, he wheezed. Several times it seemed that helooked directly down on them, and Henry’s stomach knottedand all his muscles tensed, awaiting a red spurt of flame and theimpact of a bullet. Yet the man did not see them. He turnedaway and walked up through the yielding rice grass, the gunmuzzle still weaving in a short arc. When he was out of sight,Nina drew in her breath in a low sob. Henry’s hand tightenedon her back and she was still except for quivering that camein spasms. A hundred yards to the south, where the shell roadwas, a light wink